A top federal judge said if he and his colleagues had known the
economy was going to be this bad, they might not have picked an
oceanfront resort and spa in Hawaii as the site for a big judicial
conference this month.
“In hindsight, had we foreseen the nation’s current fiscal problems, we may have chosen a different site for this year’s conference,” wrote Alex Kozinski, chief judge for the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in California, in a letter to two Republican senators released Wednesday.
Documents made public Wednesday show that contract papers for the conference were prepared in October 2010, when the unemployment rate was nearly 10 percent.
Judge Kozinski did not back off plans to hold the upcoming judicial gathering for federal judges and court employees at the Hyatt Regency Maui Resort & Spa, an oceanfront hotel where the website invites prospective guests to “frolic,” “pamper” and “play.”
With the nation’s economic troubles and recent conference scandals at the U.S. General Services Administration, two Republican senators in May criticized the Hawaii conference.
Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Jeff Sessions of Alabama, ranking member of the Judiciary subcommittee on administrative oversight and the courts, sent a letter seeking a host of details, including contracts, for the conference. While a judicial website said activities such as yoga, stand-up paddle-board lessons and dance would not use any government funds, the senators wrote in their letter that the program “reads more like a vacation than a business trip to discuss the means of improving the administration of justice.”
Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/aug/8/judge-expresses-regret-on-lavish-hawaii-conference/?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS
“In hindsight, had we foreseen the nation’s current fiscal problems, we may have chosen a different site for this year’s conference,” wrote Alex Kozinski, chief judge for the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in California, in a letter to two Republican senators released Wednesday.
Documents made public Wednesday show that contract papers for the conference were prepared in October 2010, when the unemployment rate was nearly 10 percent.
Judge Kozinski did not back off plans to hold the upcoming judicial gathering for federal judges and court employees at the Hyatt Regency Maui Resort & Spa, an oceanfront hotel where the website invites prospective guests to “frolic,” “pamper” and “play.”
With the nation’s economic troubles and recent conference scandals at the U.S. General Services Administration, two Republican senators in May criticized the Hawaii conference.
Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Jeff Sessions of Alabama, ranking member of the Judiciary subcommittee on administrative oversight and the courts, sent a letter seeking a host of details, including contracts, for the conference. While a judicial website said activities such as yoga, stand-up paddle-board lessons and dance would not use any government funds, the senators wrote in their letter that the program “reads more like a vacation than a business trip to discuss the means of improving the administration of justice.”
Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/aug/8/judge-expresses-regret-on-lavish-hawaii-conference/?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS
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